joefavs

The “Kylo was able to kill the rest of the Jedi so he should have also been able to easily defeat Rey” argument doesn’t hold any water because we have no idea what the status of the Jedi Order was when he took it down. It’s my belief that Luke might have been reluctant to teach his pupils how to use the Force violently, at least in the early part of their training; I even have doubts that he’d taught any of his students how to build a lightsaber at the time Kylo slaughtered everyone. Again, this is purely my conjecture, but there’s nothing in the film that contradicts this so it’s entirely possible. I think Luke was teaching his new Jedi a more peaceful, meditative approach to the Force than the whole warrior monk thing we saw in the old Jedi Order, and that Kylo learned his violent abilities from Snoke, who we know was already tempting him before he turned on the Jedi. So when he turns up to kill everyone, he’s the only guy with a lightsaber (which Snoke taught him to make, which explains why it’s such a different style than the one Luke built for himself), and the other students are totally unprepared for the confrontation. The way I think it went down, Kylo Ren was essentially a school shooter.

And the idea that he was able to do this simply because he was the only guy in the room with a lightsaber carries over to his status in the First Order. People complain that he’s been intimidating and effective up until the confrontation with Rey and that it’s out of character for him suddenly to lose his command of the situation at that point, but really all we’ve seen to demonstrate his power to that point is him bullying non-Force users. He’s a big fish in a small pond until Rey shows up, and he’s completely thrown off his game when he has to face someone else with access to the same kind of power he uses to lord over all the helpless normals.

Ryan McAvoy said:

SilverWook said:

Top men are working on it. 😉

Who?

Looks like Phil Noto’s at it again, making his own posters that will inevitably turn out to be way better than whatever the official one is:

I’m seeing some buzz that Ben Mendelssohn’s officer character may in fact be the old EU’s Armand Isard, who was re-canonized by the Tarkin novel. Someone connected to Lucasfilm (I forget exactly who) hinted that we may have seen him before on Twitter yesterday.

Every single time I think it’s going to go into the Lawrence of Arabia theme just after Poe and Finn steal the TIE fighter.

Mon Mothma is with the Rebel fleet a couple of months after the Battle of Yavin in the canon comics, for what it’s worth.

I mentioned it a couple pages ago, but the white uniforms in ANH are for the Imperial Security Bureau, or ISB: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Security_Bureau

Well she has to be somewhere during this part of the timeline. It’s way harder for me to believe she showed up and ascended to a leadership position in the Rebellion during the year between ESB and ROTJ than that she was kicking around offscreen during the earlier films.

pittrek said:

I absolutely agree. But that’s not what I was trying to say. Back to the Star Trek example - the TOS captain is an energetic Canadian playing an energetic American, the TNG captain is a middle aged balding Englishman playing a father figure-type Frenchman, DS9 has a black captain who is an ACTUAL father, VOY has a female captain who is a mix between a mother figure and a calm logical scientist (except the episodes when she’s Ripley), and Enterprise has a Kirk rip-off. If you go to Star Wars, the original trilogy’s lead is a young guy and he’s supported buy an “older brother”-type character, a wise old mentor, a princess, an alien and robots. The prequels have even more diversity. But now we get TFA which has a young woman as the main hero followed by Rogue One which has AGAIN a young woman as the main character. They’re just repeating the formula too soon - that’s the only thing which I was trying to say.

We have no idea what Felicity Jones’s characterization is going to be like, though. In fact, going by this trailer, I’d say it looks likely that she’s going to be quite a different sort of character from Rey (jaded, embittered revolutionary as opposed to hopeful, idealistic Force-adept). And going by your own Star Trek analogy, the age difference between Daisy Ridley and Felicity Jones is almost exactly the same as the one between Shatner and Stewart when they started their respective series.

Oh, I didn’t realize he’d started again. Well cool, the mystery remains.

Do we think this droid is Alan Tudyk’s mocap character?

Looks like a potential nod to 8t88 from Jedi Knight.

I believe it was decided at some point in the evolution of the canon that the white uniforms in ANH belong to the Imperial Security Bureau, which is depicted as something like the Soviet KGB. Not sure if that still holds for the Disney era.

Could Peter have been counting down to the Rogue One trailer? He’d have finished around now if he hadn’t stopped a couple weeks ago.

MalàStrana said:

joefavs said:

Just saw it. AT-AT’s! Mon Mothma! Old school Star Destroyers! So many chills-inducing visuals in 90 seconds or whatever it was. I’m in.

You mean: so many things you have already seen more than 30 years ago ? Ok… cinema nostalgia has killed for good creativity. This is truly terrible.

this is like complaining about U-boats and P-51 Mustangs in a WWII movie. It’s set the same year as ANH, should they have completely redesigned everything and avoided tying it in with any recognizable characters whatsoever? Or do you think they should be setting these new movies so far away in the timeline that they would bear no connection with the original stories beyond the words “Star Wars” in the title? Honestly, these hypothetical “original” and “creative” films everyone claims to want sound completely joyless to me.

Just saw it. AT-AT’s! Mon Mothma! Old school Star Destroyers! So many chills-inducing visuals in 90 seconds or whatever it was. I’m in.

DuracellEnergizer said:

Agent Cody Banks (2003) – C

Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London (2004) – D

What on earth inspired you to watch these in 2016?

I’m not sure we know that the Knights of Ren are necessarily Force users. After all, Kylo’s the only one who uses a lightsaber. It might be more about believing in the dark side than being able to use it, like an evil version of the Church of the Force that Lor San Tekka’s supposed to have belonged to. It would also help to explain how Kylo became their leader if the Force is something they all recognize and admire but don’t all have the ability to use.

He’s got one out already?

I’m looking at it again now and I think that blue shift might have been in my head.

adywan said:

I’m hoping these features do find their way online soon. Here in the Uk we are getting no exclusives so we will never get to see these extras 😦

I saw the exclusive deleted scene on YouTube the other day, so check there. I’m not sure what the rest of the content is, I think another making-featurette?

I’ve got a certain fondness for The Lost World. I understand that it’s pretty mediocre when you really break it down, but at the end of the day it’s a movie with dinosaurs, a cast I like, and a John Williams score. I’d have to see them both again to be sure because it’s been a while, but the more I think about Jurassic World, the more I think I prefer The Lost World. My ranking (with the caveat that the original is the only one I’ve watched since the weekend JW became available on Comcast):

1. Jurassic Park (obviously)
2. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
3. Jurassic World
4. Jurassic Park III

Anyway, my TFA blu-ray arrived yesterday so I watched that, but I’ve given my opinion of that many times already over in General Star Wars Discussion. the second to last movie I’ve watched was Becket, for which Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton were both nominated for Best Actor Oscars. Predictably spectacular performances that both deserved the award more than the one that actually won (Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, I believe).

I give ROTJ a B and TFA a B+ mostly because of the overall energy level. The ROTJ script doesn’t really give anyone but Luke and the Emperor much to do, and consequently a lot of the other actors sort of phone it in. In TFA, everyone’s totally into it and it shows. That might not be enough for the crowd that’s constantly pissing and moaning about the unclear political situation (a view towards which I’m sympathetic) and Kylo Ren’s unsuitability as a villain (a view I think is completely bogus), but I’ve personally always cared more about the tone of these movies than anything else, and TFA delivered on the wide-eyed enthusiasm front just a bit more than ROTJ.

SilverWook said:

There’s also the possibility that Rey was really angry and pissed off at Ren by that point, and was dipping her toe in the Dark Side, much like Luke did when he beat Vader in ROTJ. All the more reason she needs Luke to teach her now.

In the novelization she even hears a voice that’s implied to be Snoke’s telling her to finish Kylo off while he’s down. I think she’s definitely tapping into something not entirely wholesome in that scene.

I might have made it sound worse than it actually is, it’s just a bit colder looking than I recalled. If anyone else has the disc yet, please, weigh in.

suspiciouscoffee said:

joefavs said:

Anyone else think the blu-ray looks a little blue? It’s nowhere near as off as the official OT discs, but it’s definitely noticeable in a good amount of scenes. I’d compare it to the way the Mad Max: Fury Road BD skewed a bit red. Other than that, I’m pretty pleased with the quality.

It was pretty blue in the theater, was it not? Both times I saw it, even the opening crawl starfield was full of blueish stars rather than white ones.

Yeah, I remember that too, but it seems to affect skin tones a lot more than I remember on the disc.